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By Tom HudsonThe Miami Herald • Monday June 16, 2014 12:18 AM

Gone are the days of prices scratched out on chalkboards. Ticker-tape
machines are relics. Morning newspaper stock-quote pages have shrunk. Scenes of wild hand
gesticulations and shouting oneself hoarse have been relegated to TV backdrops.

The stock market is an electronic marvel of technology and innovation. Money moving in
microseconds fueled by algorithms has replaced deliberate decisions by long-term investors. Wall
Street is an address. The real stock trading takes place in data centers in New Jersey and from
digital microwave dishes in Illinois.

The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations slowly turns its attention to high-speed
trading on Tuesday. The hearing’s proposition is that the increasing speed of trading has led to
investors losing confidence. Critics of accelerating market speed worry the technology is fallible
and destructive. It is. The flash crash in May 2010 wiped out $800 billion of U.S. stock wealth in
a few minutes.

Higher trading volume in the early 1970s led to trading halts and even market closures as
brokers and exchanges got caught up on paperwork. Computer trading ushered in the modern pricing of
stocks in dollars and cents instead of dollars and fractions. That revolution helped bring about
today’s nanosecond trading.